Exploring the role of digital civil society platforms in improving Right to Information regimes

Arguably, ICTs would help to increase the efficiency of the information publication process as well as the way in which requesters access information. However, governments did not always develop -on their own -technology to facilitate these processes and, when they did, in many cases they were not the first ones in doing so. In 2006 Phil Rodgers and Francis Irving developed the basics of the website whatdotheyknow.org. The idea was simple: a piece of software that would allow citizens to issue RTI requests. In 2008 the British non-governmental organizations (NGO), My Society, pushed forward the idea, and fully developed the website. This approach was novel for several reasons: it did not require government’s consent, and it was developed based on free-software. The rationale behind the project was that citizens would ask information through one single portal, with no need of knowing the email address of each mandated agency, and that the government would reply. Following the steps of that initial development, an emerging group of civil society actors have deployed RTI portals in at least 22 countries, allowing citizens to make requests online. These platforms allow users not only to issue requests by accessing just one site, no matter the agency or topic, but also without having to research for email addresses. Further these platforms usually present a feature of proactive disclosure of all responses in order to allegedly improve the efficiency of the procedure allowing users to monitor requests, as well as setting up a knowledge repository where all requests are centralised. As more portals are set up, a pertinent question for all these platforms relates to the relationship between these portals and the actual improvement of RTI regimes as well as the dissemination of the exercise of this right. This paper, commissioned by U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, analyses RTI online platforms that have been developed by civil society organizations in 5 countries with different traditions and at different stages of implementation of the RTI legislation. We selected these cases to explore if and how these civil society platforms had an effect on RTI regimes. First, we provide an overview on how these actors and technologies evolved at a global level while we offer a set of basic definitions about RTI regimes and civic technology. Then, we explore each case following a comparative framework. Third, we discuss the role of requesters, government and enforcement institutions. Finally we provide a set of recommendations to donors and other organizations based on our cases and the available literature. We argue that portals play a meaningful but limited role in improving RTI regimes. We documented at least 7 effects of these portals in RTI regimes, We also note that the sustainability of these initiatives requires new ways of understanding the role of civic tech organizations in RTI regimes. We note that without these portals being developed, some of the positive changes in these RTI regimes would not have materialized